


Brothers

by SegaBarrett



Category: Bates Motel (2013)
Genre: M/M, Post-Season 4, Sibling Incest, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:44:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8970133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Dylan is drawn back to Norman's side.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [krisherdown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krisherdown/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Bates Motel, and I make no money from this.

Dylan wished that he could say he was close to his brother.

If close was something anyone other than Norma could be to Norman. It was hard when you weren’t two sides of the same coin, fused together like some kind of weird freakish creation created in a lab instead of a family.

He wasn’t close to his brother, but he loved him. That much he knew.

If he searched his memory he knew he could find the moment he realized that Norman was different than him in so many ways. 

It hadn’t been when he was first born, no, that would be too easy. 

And he had been so excited to have a new baby brother to hold and cuddle. It was so lonely sometimes, living with Norma and Sam. A baby would make it easier. He would have a best friend to carry around and protect and love.

He could remember the first time he’d peeped into the tiny bassinet and Norman’s tiny eyes had looked back at him, as if Dylan, still only a toddler, was somehow larger than life in that moment. 

He had vowed to never let anything hurt him. At that age Dylan already knew what hurt looked like. 

And now Norman was a man – or was he a little boy, still? Sometimes it was hard to tell with the things Norman did.

So maybe he wasn’t close to Norman, not exactly, but he still cared about him. And watching this happen to him, whatever this madness inside him truly was, was killing Dylan.

“Norman?” he called. His brother was asleep, now, or was he blacked out? Some days everything was hard to tell in this house, just like it had been when Dylan was a child.

Only now, there were even more secrets. 

Dylan rapped on the door, almost hoping that Norman didn’t answer. He didn’t want to have this conversation with him, or any conversation, really. But it was another one they needed to have.

Maybe he could be the one to save his brother, or maybe they were both beyond saving.  
“Dylan?”

Norman’s voice came out of the darkness, and Dylan almost tripped over himself. He didn’t like voices coming out of the dark, or people sneaking up on him.

“Hey,” he softened his voice and stepped into Norman’s room, shaking off the childish fear. He was a man now, too. 

“I was sleeping,” Norman said, and Dylan waited in silence for him to say more. Nothing seemed to be forthcoming, so he sighed and stepped forward, finding the light switch and turning on the light. It was almost blinding.

It had been a long time since Dylan had come home again. He had left Emma in Seattle to her new, beautiful life, deciding that beautiful people and beautiful things didn’t have a place in Dylan’s life. He only broke them.

It had taken a while for the news to get to him about Norma. It had gotten to Will, first. He had found her obituary in the White Pine Bay paper. 

He had, in turn, told Emma. She had to break the news to Dylan.

And Dylan had gone home. He hadn’t seen Emma in weeks, now, and he was not sure when he would return. 

Maybe he never would. He loved her – loved her so much it hurt – but maybe he was just too broken to be in a relationship. Maybe there was something about being part of this family that made it impossible to belong in any other place in the world.

That welded him to this unholy spot.

How could he ever leave Norman now? Or take him with him? 

This place was a fixed point in time.

“How are you holding up?” Dylan asked him, and the question was to himself as much as it was to Norman. He should have figured something out about Norma, should have come to some conclusion about whether he loved her or hated her. That was what was supposed to happen, wasn’t it? Some sort of death bed confession where everyone burst into tears and left feeling like they had come to some kind of closure, whatever that truly meant.

“I’m fine, Dylan,” Norman said, his voice showing clear signs of annoyance. “You don’t need to keep asking me that.”

And yet, Dylan did – his brother was unreadable sometimes; it was hard to tell how much he even understood that Norma was gone and never coming back. Some days he had a look as if he was completely lost and without anyone to cling to, and other days he talked about life as if everything were business as usual and Norma would be walking downstairs any second. 

Dylan still wasn’t sure which would be easier to deal with, but one or the other would certainly be easier than attempting to straddle between the two.

“I just want to make sure that you’re okay,” Dylan told him. “A lot has happened to us recently.” 

“I was fine before you came along.” Norman took a seat at the kitchen table, placing his hands together as if he was preparing himself to go to church or something equally innocuous. “Chick was helping me out.”

Dylan paused in his tracks.

“Chick?” he asked. “….Chick Hogan… How do you know him?”

“He came by an introduced himself to Mother and I.”

Dylan let out a long sigh. That was the last thing he needed, Chick coming around and taking advantage of his brother. Now he could never leave.

He would have to tell Emma that he just couldn’t come back. That maybe it was best if she found other things to look forward to in her life. 

He just wasn’t sure he would be able to find the words. Here was the one person who knew everything about him, even the darkest thing (the thing he had trouble admitting to himself), and here he was telling her that she needed to go.

But this was somewhere that Emma couldn’t follow.

“You need to stay away from Chick Hogan.”

“You’re telling me what I need to do, Dylan?” Norman sounded amused, somehow.

“He’s a bad person. He sent me out to get killed, and he wants to kill…” Dylan trailed off. That was a name that didn’t mean anything anymore.

“He was here for me,” Norman said with a shrug. There was an implied “when you weren’t” hanging in the air. “I’m going to bed. Good night, Dylan.”

***

Dylan found himself unable to sleep. He rolled around, restless and uncomfortably hard. He wanted to think of Emma, to imagine her soft skin against him, to dream of what could have been and what could never be again.

And then he didn’t. 

He kept feeling other skin under his fingers, kept seeing other eyes when he closed his.

He didn’t understand. Why was Norman creeping in, why? 

He shouldn’t be like that. He shouldn’t be like… there was no reason for history to repeat itself, especially now that Norma was gone. It was time to start over.

Not like Dylan didn’t know what Norman had done, of course – he had to. There was no way he could deny it, even to himself. But the police hadn’t seen it that way.

They had thought that Norma could murder the son she loved like nothing else in her life. 

People could be very blind; but then why was Dylan back here, with a brother he knew had murdered their mother?

He couldn’t really say, nor could he tell what brought him to the door and down the hallway. To knock on Norman’s door, to slip into his room. To press his lips against his brother’s like this wasn’t repeating history, like this didn’t get more wrong every second. 

He tried to shut off his brain, tried to follow his instinct.

“Dylan?” 

***

Norman was so tiny, so little in Dylan’s arms. His baby brother was perfect. 

Norma had placed him in his arms. Dylan was four; he wanted to be an important big brother, wanted to protect Norman from anything that might come to hurt him. 

Like Sam.

Sam was big and booming and scary. He stomped when he walked.

Dylan was afraid of him. He would hide under the bed when Sam came home angry.

But he couldn’t do that anymore, not with tiny Norman here now.

He used to be afraid of the dark; he’d make Norma leave his nightlight on.

Sam used to laugh at him, mock him, come in and turn it off, and Dylan would cry silently, not bothering to ask for comfort that he was sure wouldn’t come. 

Now, he sat in their shared room, on his tiny bed, and stared at Norman’s crib. He wasn’t ready to put him in there just yet.

He listened to Norma and Sam yell. 

“Leave me alone! I just got out of the hospital! What the hell do you want from me?”

The sound of a crash.

“Hi, Norman. I’m your brother, Dylan. And I love you.”

***

“Dylan? What was that?”

Dylan blinked. He reached out to pat Norman’s hair and make a soothing noise.

“Never mind, Norman… Just go back to bed, okay? Everything is going to be fine.”


End file.
